


Purpose

by sheffiesharpe



Category: Vinland Saga
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-23
Updated: 2008-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-14 12:38:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheffiesharpe/pseuds/sheffiesharpe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Re-envisioning of Chapter 45.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Purpose

**Author's Note:**

> Re-envisioning of Chapter 45.

Standing in the snow, the wound in his side bleeding slow and sickening, something fouling in it, he _feels_ the cold for the first time in what he is certain is years. On long marches, winter nights, he has understood it, but now he _feels_ it, pulling at him, but he cannot stop now. Askeladd is waiting for him, because Askeladd will do this for him, won’t make him die in a bed. He lifts his sword, and he has never known it to be heavy before. It’s heavy now. Like his feet, like the shadows under Askeladd’s eyes. He knows himself to be talking, and he feels those words, too, but the two things are separate: his lips move, and the sense of what he says filters in, but not in sound. That is only the rushing of blood and the pounding of ache.

Askeladd’s strike hits very nearly in the first wound, the one that is killing him, and something feels like it wrenches free, and he can’t feel the first for the white hiss of Askeladd’s blade. But that’s not killing him, and Askeladd is reaching and soon it will be over, soon—

But the Prince’s voice cuts the air fogged with his breath. The words, again, don’t touch his ears, but rather his bones. Askeladd is arguing, because Askeladd is good at that, because a man has a right to die like a _man_ , like a warrior, but Canute’s speech is crisp, like the air. Clear. He is not speaking to Askeladd. He is crouched at Bjorn’s side, where surely there must be blood staining the snow, and he touches Bjorn’s cheek. Like he did before. His hands feel like they did before, not hot, not cold, but cool, like running water, and they…they wash him. Somehow. Without moving. Canute speaks.

“I said I would give purpose to your life and death. And this death serves no purpose. So live, warrior, and let me use you to better ends.” His hair is so sun-yellow in the grayness of it all, and Bjorn wants to knot his fist in it. He thinks he could lift himself like that, make himself stand again, and he reaches, finds a grip in it. His own blood smears that white skin, and that makes him try to sit up. He has to wipe the prince’s cheek clean, and Canute’s lips turn up at the edges.

“That’s it,” he says, “hold fast.” He’s still touching Bjorn’s face.

“Prince,” Askeladd says, and he sounds wounded, too. He’s not. Bjorn knows. He couldn’t strike properly. “Let the man _go_.”

Canute is shaking his head, and he not looking at Askeladd. “If he is ready, I will not keep him. But he is not, is he? Will you live for me, warrior?”

Bjorn isn’t certain he can shake his head or nod, either or both, but there is still air in his lungs. It doesn’t feel like that is leaving. And because he can speak, he says _yes_. Defending the prince against ten didn’t kill him. He hadn’t been safe in the berserker rage when the wound happened—he had been cooled—cooling—and confused, and it was a confused long knife that did this hurt, Atli’s mistake—he can do _better_ than dying from a mistake. He will not shame his name to die so dumbly. The tension returns to his neck, and he nods, too. Askeladd makes a noise that might be cursing, but Canute is peeling away the bloodied material, the parts that are black with the old blood and now full of new slick red.

Canute raises his head in one arm, supports him there on his fine-cloaked knees, and when he moves, the wound Askeladd’s sword made, where it feels like it has cut through the old, so mixed are the pains, where it _has_ cut through _him_ , pierced his back—the wound spills foul-smelling blood, greenishness, the fester that had been caught in the depths of the first, and Canute’s white fingers are hooked _inside_ his skin, holding the cut flesh open while the blood flows, until there’s only fresh, bright red pooling. The world goes not white, not black, but yellow. Gold.

* * *

He wakes to pain like he has never known, pain and the stink of burning flesh. It’s his own. He is not outside anymore—he doesn’t know where he is, Askeladd’s not here, nor is Thorfinn, only the prince and the priest, and the priest looks sober, pale under his dirt and sunken eyes. But Canute’s cheeks are pink, and he is concentrating on something beside him, where the fire must be, given the heat and the closeness of the light, brow furrowed, and there’s another smear of red at his chin. Bjorn knows it’s his. He is panting like an animal, but he will not move, he knows that much. Canute turns, sees his open eyes.

“It will be better, Bjorn, if you swoon again. But I will make you whole.” There is a knife, blade hot to glowing, in his hand. The priest’s fingers are in his side, holding the wound open again. He smells the searing flesh before he feels it, and the prince was right. He wishes he were unconscious, but then he is, and it doesn’t matter.

* * *

He wakes again, and Askeladd is here this time. Thorfinn is not. Canute is not.

“Did you finally do it this time?” Bjorn asks because it is the thing he wants to know most, right now. His voice rasps raw.

Askeladd startles—and that is so rare, Bjorn has to grin. His mouth still works, though it still tastes of old blood. Then Askeladd shakes his head, and it takes a moment for him to return the smirk.

“The prince would not let me.” He pulls his chair closer, an inch, two. “He is forming quite a habit of that.”

“Nobles,” Bjorn says. He tries to spit, can’t. Tries to sit up, and the pain bursts in his side. Askeladd puts his hand on Bjorn’s shoulder, pushes him back down.

“I told him it would not work,” Askeladd says, and the hollows of his cheeks look gaunt. His hand goes to his sword-hilt, and his voice is grave. “I will do it, if you wish it. I am sorry,” he says, “that I missed the mark.” They both know that a rarity. Bjorn wonders if there is another word for it, but he is not so superstitious to call it else.

There is water in a cup by the bed. Bjorn turns toward it, and even that somehow hurts, but there’s something wholesome in the pain. “Let me drink,” he says. “If the water drips from the bandages, your sword goes here.” The fingers of his left hand point to his throat.

Askeladd nods, and he holds the cup to Bjorn’s mouth. The cool of it transports him, and he can feel it pool in his stomach. Swallowing hurts, but not especially. Nothing else happens.

Bjorn doesn’t know how long they are bound here. That worries him. Askeladd is watching the bandage, and there are no fresh red spots, but still he watches.

“Askeladd.” When he looks up, Bjorn has to ask. “If we have to leave Gainsborough—” If you can’t keep up, you die. That is what they held to, crossing into Mercia. He will hold to it now. He can’t ride a horse like this.

Askeladd holds the cup to his mouth again, and his mouth turns up at the left corner. “I’d gladly leave your half-corpse where it lies.” Bjorn is _relieved_ , but Askeladd goes on. “But the prince, surely, will have other ideas.”

Yes, Bjorn thinks. He will. He drinks until the cup is empty, around the sound of the door, and when he looks up again, the prince is there, yellow-haired, Thorfinn a bruised and lumpen shadow behind his right shoulder. Other ideas. Yes.


End file.
